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When you have the facts, pound the facts. When you have the law, pound the law. When you have neither, pound the table. The NCAA would do well to remember this old legal axiom as it enters a dangerous stage of its lawsuit over image and likeness rights collectively known as the Ed O’Bannon case. On Monday of this week, the organization requested a 15-month continuance of the opening date of the trial — currently scheduled for June 9, 2014 — in a shamelessly transparent attempt to solidify its position by distancing itself from one of its most embarrassing gaffes in the past few years. Jay Bilas, anyone? EA sports and Collegiate Licensing Co., co-defendants in the case along with the NCAA, interestingly enough only requested a five-month continuance for the start of the trial. The federal judge overseeing this lawsuit, Claudia Wilken, had requested that the defendants come to a mutual agreement on trial date by Monday, but their inability to come to simple terms on that question may only serve to anger her as she weighs a number of important motions on class certification and other items that will seriously impact the case.

And the hits just keep on coming. Mere days after a social media-fueled firestorm over the NCAA’s initial decision (subsequently reversed) to deny former US Marine Steven Rhodes from walking on to play football this year for Middle Tennessee, another controversy has enveloped the organization over an eligibility question that strains the limits of common sense. As The Star-Ledger‘s Tom Liucciwrites, Iowa State transfer Kerwin Okorowas recently denied a waiver to play for Rutgers in 2013-14 because his medical hardships — Okoro’s father and brother each passed away last winter — are not current. The rule on receiving a medical hardship waiver states that the player must show “medical documentation of a debilitating injury or illness to a student-athlete’s immediate family member that is debilitating and requires ongoing medical care,” technically precluding Okoro from the benefit. But how about some big picture common sense here? While it’s true that Okoro will not be required to care for his now-deceased relatives, there are other compelling reasons involving his family’s overall healing process that should also be considered in such a decision.

We’ve long known that Division I college basketball players are some of the best all-around athletes in the world, what with the core components of elite “athleticism” — speed, agility, strength, flexibility, stamina — all very well-represented in our sport. Several athletes who perhaps weren’t skilled enough for professional basketball found their way into other athletic sports — we’re thinking about NFL tight ends such as Tony Gonzalez or Antonio Gates here — but, as The Dagger‘s Jeff Eisenberg writes, a lesser-known version of football played in Australia is looking at college basketball as a nice pipeline to find its next generation of ruckmen. A what, you say? Well, a ruckman is someone in Australian Rules Football who is tasked with securing possession for his team after dead balls and scores through a modified jump ball situation. Who better than to fit that need for our friends Down Under than undersized big men with explosive hops and a knack for getting their hands on the ball. As the world becomes flatter in economics and sport, we imagine that we’ll start to hear more stories like these as the rest of the planet discovers just how athletic our basketball players — even those outside the NBA — actually are.

One of the most discouraging stories of last offseason has resurfaced in a big way with the news on Wednesday that former Xavier-turned-Maryland guard Dez Wells, he of the rape allegations so absurd that the local prosecutor publicly stated they were “fundamentally unfair,” has decided to sue his old school for damage to his reputation and a good old-fashioned apology. In an environment where seemingly every semi-public figure claims that he will sue to protect his good name after getting blatantly caught telling bold-faced lies, it’s encouraging to see a situation where the justice system will be used to mete out some actual justice. Xavier expelled Wells from its school last summer, citing a decision made by its Conduct Board (and upheld on appeal) that predated the related criminal grand jury investigation; as a result, Wells has since suffered mightily from the school’s rush to judgment. That he’s bringing this case while he’s still playing NCAA basketball is rich with storyline possibilities — could he somehow face his legal adversary in a postseason match-up for the ages between the Terps and Musketeers? We can only hope…

A lot of schedules have been releasing over the past couple of weeks, and the most notable in the last 24 hours were from a couple of conferences. First, the SECreleased its conference-only schedule, featuring a bunch of mediocre teams that nobody pays attention to until February a solid balance of Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday night games with the standard Saturday smorgasbord but lacking the Kentucky-Tennessee battle in Knoxville that has produced so many great contests over the years. A special thank you goes out to Texas A&M and Missouri for that omission. On the other side of the continent, the WCCalso released its conference schedule, which means that the only two games of true importance in this league — Gonzaga vs. Saint Mary’s, Acts I and II — should already be inked into your calendar (January 2 and March 1). Many more of these releases to come in the next few weeks.

Another day, another mob with pitchforks standing outside the gates. ESPN.com‘s Darren Rovell reported yesterday that a group of former NCAA athletes has filed a $5 million suit in federal court against a company that sells photographs of college athletes without their express permission. Although the claim does not list the NCAA nor some 90 schools alleged to sell images to the defendant company, it wouldn’t be much of a leap to eventually go after them as well down the line. Under current NCAA rules, the schools have the right to promote their own games using player images, but the legal question will center around whether they also have the right to sell or transfer those images. This lawsuit is of course unrelated to the Ed O’Bannon likeness case also working its way through the system in federal court, but the underlying issue — that players are not compensated for their work and corresponding brand — is very similar.

While on the subject of the mission of the NCAA and its member institutions, the Chronicle of Higher Educationpublished a piece yesterday from a professor at Ohio State University named Steven Conn. Conn, an American history scholar, took his soon-to-be-former boss, OSU president Gordon Gee, to task not so much for his forced retirement based on a series of verbal gaffes; rather, for helping to create and propagate the “athletic-industrial beast that defines higher education now.” The point he’s ultimately making is that college presidents nowadays have to spend so much time dealing with their athletic programs because of the money and prestige associated with them, that they’ve completely lost sight of what the true mission of an institution of higher learning is supposed to represent. Interesting read.

With all the pressure on programs to succeed in the revenue sports, it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that the average D-I men’s basketball coach has been at his current job for a total of 38 months — just over three years. This information and plenty of other coaching longevity tidbits comes courtesy of D1scourse, Patrick Stevens’ site examining college sports in the mid-Atlantic area. Although it was news to us that only one coach has survived at one school since the ’70s (Jim Boeheim at Syracuse, 1976), and only seven since the ’80s, the real takeaway from his analysis is that over 55 percent of true seniors who signed a letter of intent in November 2009 have experienced a coaching change in their careers. And yet we continue to penalize them for transferring, why, again?

While on that topic, a really odd situation has developed involving DePaul forward Donnovan Kirk, a player who spent the first two years of his career at Miami (FL) before transferring to Chicago for the last two seasons. Given Miami’s success under Jim Larranaga especially relative to the train wreck at DePaul, Kirk has now decided to use his graduate transfer exception to head back to Miami for his final season. That’s right: a double-transfer where he is ending up at the same school where he originally started. He only averaged 6/4 last season for the Blue Demons, but he’s a great leaper and was among the Big East leaders in blocked shots per game (1.6 BPG). He’ll move right into a lineup in Coral Gables that is extremely lacking in experienced size, so this appears to be a win/win for both parties.

The fortunes next season for another major basketball school in Florida — not FGCU, sorry — are still somewhat up in the air at this early summer point of the offseason. There are always a number of players finishing up coursework and dealing with standardized test scores to become eligible for next season, but in the case of Florida’s Chris Walker,there are serious concerns about his eventual eligibility. Not only does he still need to pass the ACT, which he has now taken three times, but he has to finish three core course requirements over the summer before he can enroll at the university in Gainesville. With most players these days getting themselves on campus for the early summer term to start prepping for next season, it doesn’t appear that will be an option for Walker very soon, if ever.

Wednesday was a huge media day around the world of college basketball, with not one, not two, but three power conferences holding their Media Day yesterday. Why conferences don’t think to stagger these a little better to dominate the entire national spotlight seems like really poor planning to us, but nobody asked for our opinion on marketing best practices either. The ACC Media Day (“Operation Basketball”) took place in Charlotte; the Big East in New York; and, the Big 12 in Kansas City. Let’s take a brief look at some of the storylines from each one. In Charlotte, the ACC media cartel mimicked the coaches earlier this week in rating NC State as the preseason favorite to win the league, with 26 first-place votes. Duke followed in second place with 21 first-place votes, while North Carolina was picked third. The preseason all-ACC first team includes UNC’s James Michael McAdoo, Florida State’s Michael Snaer (unanimous), Duke’s Mason Plumlee, and NC State’s Lorenzo Brown and CJ Leslie (unanimous, POY). The Wolfpack are certainly the school du jour this preseason in the ACC, but can a 9-7 team from last season really get over its losing tendencies to overtake Duke and North Carolina this season? We certainly shall see.

A few hundred miles up the eastern seaboard, the Big East did its thing in NYC, with the media sniffing around for angles related to the last season for conference stalwarts Syracuse and Pittsburgh. Louisville made immediate headlines for its unanimous selection by conference coaches to win the league this season, but it was the Cardinals’ loquacious coach who caused the biggest stir with his comments that his team “could have the best 10 players in America” — including Big East preseason player of the year, Peyton Siva — and that, according to Zagsblog, he still truly believes that the additions of Temple and Memphis next season can adequately replace the losses of the Orange and Panthers. Jim Boeheim, quite naturally, vehemently disagreed with Pitino’s assessment (“I think he’s full of s–t.”). Boeheim’s team was picked to finish second in the league standings, with Notre Dame, Cincinnati, Georgetown and Pittsburgh following the Orange in the top six. Joining Siva on the preseason first team were Cincinnati’s Sean Kilpatrick, Georgetown’s Otto Porter, Notre Dame’s Jack Cooley, Providence’s Vincent Council, and Siva’s Louisville teammate, Gorgui Dieng. Pitt’s Steven Adams was selected as the preseason Rookie of the Year. In one other significant announcement from Big East Media Day, the league announced an extension with Madison Square Garden that will keep the Big East Tournament there through 2026.

Moving to the Midwest and Kansas City specifically, the Big 12 emphasized a league in transition with the additions of West Virginia and TCU replacing the dearly departed schools of Missouri and Texas A&M. Throw in new coaches at Kansas State and Texas Tech, and there were quite a few get-to-know-you introductions going around the Sprint Center on Wednesday. We plan on having a more detailed post on what happened there a little later today on our Big 12 microsite, but to whet your appetite, take a look at this quasi-live-blog from the Charleston Daily Mail‘s Mike Casazza. His descriptions of the day’s events have a definite “we’re not in the Big East anymore” feel to them, as the Mountaineers are a minimum of 870 miles from the nearest Big 12 school (Iowa State). Here’s hoping that WVU hedged on jet fuel when it was at its lowest market rate.

We’re hoping that this is the last time we mention this player’s name in this space, but former UCLA malcontent Reeves Nelson‘s defamation lawsuit against Sports Illustratedwas thrown out of a Los Angeles court on Wednesday. Defamation suits often turn on the status of the plaintiff as a public or private figure, and Nelson’s notoriety as a prominent college basketball player at one of the nation’s elite programs qualified him as a “limited public figure” that would require a clear showing of malice toward him by the magazine. In the absence of evidence that author George Dohrmann made up some of the anecdotes involving Nelson in the March story about UCLA’s out-of-control program, “Not the UCLA Way.” Nelson’s case was destined for failure. The judge said that the story was well-sourced and that Dohrmann had “spent a lot of time” on it.

You know you’re doing something right in a lawsuit if the defendant’s attorneys start attacking the plaintiff’s ringleader long before the discovery phase ends. According to this report fromThe Birmingham News, the NCAA and its licensees maneuvered hard against marketing guru Sonny Vaccaro in an attempt to discredit him prior to a ruling by a federal court in California about whether the so-called Ed O’Bannon likeness case will become a class action suit. It’s no secret that Vaccaro has encouraged ex-players who feel wronged by the perpetual and ongoing usage of their faces and likenesses to join the suit, but the NCAA questioned whether his financial motives were too inextricably tied to the players to render him prejudicial. The NCAA had requested voluminous records of his communications for years, but ultimately, the two sides agreed that Vaccaro would turn over “custodial records from Vaccaro’s three organizations, communications with the plaintiffs, camp/tournament documents using players’ likeness, and payment records to or from players.” The court plans on making a decision on the class action later this fall, and without question that ruling could have a monumental impact on the future financial solvency of the NCAA.

Thursday was an assistant coach kind of weekday as a number of high-profile schools announced comings and goings among their coaching support staff. Kentucky, a school whose media relations department must work a ridiculous amount of overtime, announced that former Wildcat center Marquis Estillwill join the team as an undergraduate student assistant while he finishes his degree. Estill left school early in 2003, after receiving all-SEC honors after his junior season. Meanwhile, across the continent in Seattle, Washington announced that it was adding former Arizona State assistantLamont Smith to its staff as a top recruiter mere days after adding another new assistant, former D-II head coach Brad Jackson (Western Washington). The key word in the previous sentence is former, as Arizona State lost not only Smith but also Scott Pera, who is leaving the desert to coach closer to his home at Pennsylvania. As Herb Sendek said about the twin departures this week, “the timing isn’t ideal.” More on ASU in a post later today.

Much has been made recently about the Big East’s 60-day window to negotiate a new television deal with ESPN that begins on September 1, but it isn’t the only conference looking forward to making waves with a brand new broadcasting deal. Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told media on Wednesday that the league expects to sign a 13-year deal with FOX and ABC/ESPN worth $2.6 billion and will provide “unprecedented” exposure in a much more “widely distributed” manner. Or, in other words, what everyone else says about these deals. From a financial perspective, if this deal turns out to be true, a distribution of over a quarter-bill to each of the 10 member institutions doesn’t sound very bad after all. As Bowlsby suggests, perhaps 10 schools is the right number after all — leagues have been pushing each other out of the way to expand, but maybe they should start thinking about strategic contraction instead?

One school not reaping the tens of millions of dollars that the schools located nearby it are is Creighton, but that isn’t stopping the hot mid-major basketball school from investing in its future while things are going well on the court. Plans were announced earlier this week that the school will build the Fighting McDermotts a brand spanking new 35,000 square-foot practice facility to match what some of its MVC peers have already done. Perhaps more importantly, the school seeks to match what a certain Big Ten school an hour to the southwest is doing — even though Creighton is clearly the more successful basketball program than Nebraska, the spectre of all those BTN dollars at NU certainly keeps the Joneses over in Omaha looking over at their neighbor’s lawn. With possibly two more years of Doug McDermott as a Bluejay, this practice facility could be the recruiting carrot that Creighton needs to bridge its current and pending success with a strong recruiting future.

Last summer the story of Lamont “Momo” Jones‘ transfer from Arizona back home to Iona was a hot topic. The question of how it would ultimately impact both schools was a common refrain, and as it turned out, it was his new school that played in March Madness (losing to BYU in the First Four), while his old school was shipped to the NIT (losing to Bucknell). Jones enjoyed his best season statistically in 2011-12, going for 16/3/3 APG while shooting a career-high 46% from the field. More importantly to the rising senior, though, he spent what he characterizes as the best of year of his life near his family — especially his ailing grandmother in the Bronx — and even became a first-time father of a boy, Jace’, in May. With all the negative stories surrounding college basketball these days, this piece by Dan Greene is one that will send you into the weekend with a smile on your face.

Is UCLA on the verge of being back? Ben Howland rebuilt the west coast’s premier program in the mid-2000s with strong recruiting in his home state, culminating in three straight Final Four appearances from 2006-08. But in the last few years, the talent pool in the Golden State has dropped a bit and Sean Miller at Arizona has aggressively entered the picture for the best of the rest, leaving Howland to look elsewhere to fill his roster. With Kyle Anderson’s decision to leave New Jersey for the fairer weather of SoCal combined with the distinct possibility that UCLA will also pull #1 prospect Shabazz Muhammad out of Las Vegas, the Bruins program may be on the verge of re-joining the elite and doing it by recruiting as a nationally relevant program should — nationally. Luke Winn examines this recent phenomenon in addition to NC State, Kentucky, Houston, and Providence’s recruiting prowess in a compelling analysis this week.

Speaking of Anderson, the overall #4 player in the Class of 2012 according to RSCI, his high school coach, Bob Hurley, Sr., told Adam Zagoria recently that the 6’8″ guard might be the best player he’s ever had at powerhouse St. Anthony’s. Hurley’s alumni include a number of high-profile prep players dating back to the 80s, so this is very high praise indeed. He even goes so far to call Anderson a “modern-day Magic Johnson” with his ability to see the floor and direct his team from the perimeter with the size of a big man. These sorts of comparisons almost always seem lacking in some way, but if Anderson can bring even a smidge of Showtime back to LA over at the new and improved Pauley Pavilion next season, Bruins fans will certainly let us know.

In conference realignment’s worst kept secret, Missouri is prepared to accept an offer from an unstated conference to the south and east of its geographic base that may or may not start with the letter “S” and end with the letter “C.” Like a jilted bridesmaid, Mizzou brass would have much rather received an offer from a certain midwestern conference (last year, this year, or any year), but such an offer does not appear to be forthcoming, so as a Missouri official put it on Wednesday, the S[…]C is “what’s left.” Mike DeCourcy points out that even if Missouri ultimately joins that league, the conference could face a dilemma where its lack of a buyout could end up biting it if that other league comes calling. Quite the chess game that is going on behind the scenes here, we imagine.

As for the practical effects on Missouri’s presumed move, Kansas head coach Bill Selfhad quite a bit to say on the matter Wednesday. He told the KC Star that he, and by proxy, Kansas fans, would hate to see the Border War basketball games between Missouri and KU come to an end. “I don’t want them to leave. I think it’s too good. What we have, what we have going is one of the best five basketball rivalries in all of America, and I’d hate to see that go away.” He went on to implicitly suggest that if Mizzou in fact leaves the Big 12, the resulting frayed relationship may in effect make it impossible for the schools to play each other again for a while. It’s a well-taken point, actually, but unfortunately not one that schools seem to be giving much thought to these days. Syracuse-Georgetown, Texas A&M-Texas, Syracuse-Connecticut… all traditional rivalries that arguably are finished for some time unless school administrators are more forgiving than we think they are.

Hall of Famer Bill Russellfiled a lawsuit in Oakland on Wednesday accusing the NCAA and EA of using his likeness without his consent or compensation. Russell’s case joins former NPOY Ed O’Bannon’s in claiming that both parties violate antitrust laws by selling game footage and video games with players’ images as a material component of the content while getting nothing in return. For a greater discussion of the legal doctrines and likely positions from both sides, click here, but numerous legal experts have stated that the NCAA and EA could face a disastrous financial burden here (possibly a ten figure judgment). Russell provides another powerful name to add to this lawsuit as it winds its way through the courts.

We’ve got a lot of season preview stuff going on, as we’re sure you well know, but we want to draw your attention to our Tweeting the Preview feature which began yesterday and will continue all the way up through Opening Night on November 8 in two weeks. Every hour on the hour we’ll be providing a 140-character or less tweet previewing a team, and each morning we’ll wrap up the previous day’s tweets with a post outlining all of them in case you weren’t waiting around every hour to see them roll out live. Here’s Monday’s list, which includes the bottom dozen or so teams for 2010-11 in Division I basketball.

Score one for the mids on the recruiting trail. Norcross (GA) senior forward Alonzo Nelson-Ododa picked Richmond over California, NC State and DePaul yesterday. Maybe this isn’t too much of an upset after all, as it’s likely that UR will be far better this coming year than any of those schools (we’ll believe in Sidney Lowe’s Wolfpack when we see it…).

The NCAA was sued on Monday in federal district court in a class-action matter over its standard policy of offering only one-year renewable scholarships to its student-athletes. One of the plaintiffs is a former Rice football player named Joseph Agnew; he was released from his athletic scholarship during his senior season at the rather expensive school after a coaching change and injuries derailed his playing career. Perhaps not coincidentally, the same attorney who is representing Ed O’Bannon, et al, in their lawsuit against the NCAA and EA Sports over use of their playing likenesses in video games is also spearheading this case. Is it safe to say that Steve Berman is becoming Public Enemy #1 at NCAA headquarters in Indy?

It was a Corey Fisher kind of Monday on the interwebs, as both Seth Davis and Dana O’Neil filed reports on Mr. Summer League Century Mark’s upcoming senior season. There are a million pieces like this in the preseason, of course, but what we found particularly interesting was Davis’ conclusion from watching Villanova’s practice that he doesn’t see a Final Four appearance out of this group. He qualifies it by saying it’s only October, but this is a fairly experienced team and what you see is usually what you get with squads like that.

You’ve no doubt read or heard by now that Pittsburgh head coach Jamie Dixonplayed the role of Good Samaritan on Saturday night when a car directly in front of him on I-279 struck a barrier wall and flipped over. In this below video on ESPN, Dixon talks about what happened when he initially saw the accident and how he figured that there was no way anyone could have survived the crash. It turns out that both women riding in the car survived, and by all indications Dixon did the right thing by helping them get out of the smoking vehicle immediately (even if the first woman he helped ran away?).

Things were VERY quiet over the weekend, but as always, RTC brings you the hostess with the mostess…

Summer Hypocrisy Trail. We spend a lot of time around here criticizing the NCAA, its administrators, coaches and enablers for their acute sense of self-serving righteousness mixed with hypocrisy as it relates to their various policies of doing business. A couple of stories caught our eye to this effect over the past few days. The first was Pete Thamel’s NYT piece exposing how summer camp organizers are charging exorbitant fees to coaches for the privilege of watching its players in the stands (along with a fancy-schmancy binder of player names and hometowns, whoop-de-damn-do). Prices range from $175-$350, depending on the locale, but coaches are uniformly annoyed with such a major additional expense to their recruiting budgets. Vandy’s Kevin Stallings has taken the lead on criticizing the practice (he refused to pay the fee at a Memphis camp, turning around and driving back home), but predictably, those coaches who get their bread buttered by virtue of cozy relationships with the camp organizers (K, Howland, Matta, etc.) will not speak out publicly about this trend. And as Dana O’Neil showed in her article about a coach’s banquet in Las Vegas put on by camp organizers, there’s often very little accountability with respect to where all these fee dollars are flowing. Organizers make claims about funding AAU trips, tournaments and “feeding their families,” but as we’ve seen with allegations involving Renardo Sidney and others, the paper trail on where money ends up is often ambiguous and fraught with obfuscation. Of course, none of this should surprise you or us – the system is so completely dirty at the AAU level that we truly wonder if the NCAA will ever succeed in rooting it out. The genie is already out of the bottle, and for every World Wide Wes out there, a hundred others are gunning to take his place. Mike DeCourcy, for what it’s worth, thinks that the coaches should just STFU, and he’s probably right. Still it doesn’t change the fact that, without regulation of these camps, nobody except the organizers really know what these dollars are being used for.

Summer of Lawsuits. An odd lawsuit has arisen over a clause in a head coach’s former contract that unequivocally states that he may not continue to recruit players he was recruiting at his old school if he leaves for a new school. Matt Brady, the second-year head coach at James Madison and formerly at Marist, was sued by Marist for violating what many people suggest is an unenforceable clause that they’ve never seen employed elsewhere. Creative contract negotiations or willful ignorance of the law? Regardless, four players whom Brady was recruiting at Marist – Julius Wells, Devon Moore, Andrey Semenov and Trevon Flores – ended up at JMU instead last season, although only Wells had signed a national letter of intent (which Marist released him from). Of course, the key issue that the NY state court will consider is whether there is an obligation on the part of the coach over third parties (the recruits); we can’t imagine that the long arm of any contract would suggest such a thing, but we’re not lawyers, we just play them on tv.

UNC Title Tilt. If you’re of the opinion that the 2005 NCAA Champion UNC squad would mop the floor with the 2009 NCAA Champion NCAA squad, as we are, then you’ll have an opportunity to see players from those two teams settle the debate at the UNC Pro Alumni Game on September 4 at the Dean Dome. Nine players from the ’05 team – Raymond Felton, Sean May, Rashad McCants, Byron Sanders, Reyshawn Terry, Jackie Manuel, Quentin Thomas, Marvin Williams and Jawad Williams – are scheduled to appear, along with six players from last year’s champs – Tyler Hansbrough, Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson, Danny Green, Bobby Frasor and Michael Copeland. The scrimmage will allow for ad hoc division of rosters, and we’d expect to see several possessions where the starting lineups for each team are on the floor facing off against each other. For the record, if the two teams actually were to play at full strength, the frontline of May and M. Williams would dominate the Hansbrough/D. Thompson side, especially with the superior playmaker Felton (over Lawson) distributing the ball. The 2005 Heels weren’t as dominant in the NCAAs as the 2009 version, in part due to a lack of experience, but the talent on that team was far better.